Miss Silver stood where she was. As a private gentlewoman she would not have dreamed of listening to a conversation not intended for her ears. As a private detective she had not infrequently considered it her duty to do so. She stood quite still, holding the tray, and heard Mrs. Hubbard turn the question aside and say that she must be getting along. When the back door had closed upon her, Miss Silver retired down the passage, and then returned, her footsteps rather more evident than usual. Arrived at the kitchen door, she said, “May I come in Florrie?” and pushed it with the tray.
It was not until then that Florrie started and turned round. She had been standing at the kitchen table and staring down at it, too much immersed in her thoughts until the tray knocked against the door.
Miss Silver came into the room and set it down upon the table. As she did so she saw that what Florrie had been staring at was a little curl of tarred twine and a knot. The knot had been tightly tied and afterwards cut away. Across the coffee-tray with its two empty cups Miss Silver looked at Florrie Hunt, and Florrie looked back. It was an angry, puzzled look, but behind the puzzle and the anger there was fear. When Miss Silver said, “What is it?” Florrie answered in a lost voice,
“I don’t know-”
“It would be better if you would tell me.”
There was a slow shake of the head. Miss Silver leaned across and touched the curl of twine. She said,
“When I came down the passage the door was ajar, and I heard what you said. It was something about a string tied across the stairs to trip Miss Cunningham. You had a visitor, and you asked her who was supposed to have put it there.”
Florrie spoke angrily.
“She hadn’t got nothing to say!”
Miss Silver gave a slight corrective cough.
“I noticed that she did not say anything. May I ask who there was in the house who could have done such a thing?”
Florrie tossed her head.
“No one that I can see! There would be her, and Mr. Henry, and Mr. Nicholas. Well, it stands to reason she wouldn’t do it herself, and that leaves Mr. Nicholas and Mr. Henry. Well, I ask you! Annie Hubbard’s got little enough to think of, coming round here with a story like that!”
She got a brightly interrogative glance.
“She works at the Dower House?”
“Took on the job after Maggie went.”
“And what, do you suppose, put this story into her head?”
Mrs. Hubbard’s story about the marks on the balusters and finding the pieces of twine just underneath in the hall and the knot upstairs in Miss Cunningham’s grate along with what looked like the burnt remains of a longer piece, was retailed in what began by being a scornful voice. But somehow by the time Florrie had come to the weal on Miss Cunningham’s leg the scorn had gone out of it and something like fear had taken its place. The last words dragged and were followed in a rush by a scared,
“Who’d do a thing like that? I put it to Annie Hubbard, and you could hear for yourself she hadn’t got nothing to say.”
Miss Silver said in a meditative tone,
“There was no one else in the house except the two Mr. Cunninghams?”
“Not without someone come round visiting, and then one of the family would have had to let them in.”
Miss Silver said,
“Yes-I suppose so-”
She went through to the drawing-room and sat down with her knitting. Little Josephine’s cherry-coloured hood was now finished, and she had embarked upon leggings to match. She was not anxious to pursue the subject of the accident which Miss Cunningham had so narrowly escaped. She wished to be able to give it some quiet reflection. If anyone had intended to injure Lucy Cunningham by fastening a trip-cord across the stairs, what would be the most likely time to carry it out? It would surely only be attempted when the normal comings and goings had ceased and everyone had gone upstairs for the night. Lucy Cunningham-her brother Henry-her nephew Nicholas-
When the trip-cord had been fixed, there would have to be some device to bring the intended victim from her room, and in so much of a hurry that she would not notice the cord until too late. A black cord on a dark stair, and a woman hurrying down. Why? The thought of the telephone-bell presented itself in a very convincing manner. There is no sound more startling in the middle of the night. Yet how ensure that the telephone-bell would ring? To employ an accomplice would be extremely dangerous. There came to her memory a sound very familiar in her own flat, the ringing of the bell on the alarm clock. Heard from any other room except her bedroom it was indistinguishable from the sound of the telephone-bell. If anyone had wished to startle Miss Cunningham into running downstairs in the middle of the night, how easy to set the alarm at any of the hours past midnight and leave the clock in the hall, whence it could be retrieved before anyone observed it. It occurred to Miss Silver, and not for the first time, that all the things that had happened and were happening in Hazel Green had some association with Crewe House and the neighbouring Dower House, and that the occupants of these two houses were intimately connected. Furthermore, if two crimes had indeed been carried out and a third was being attempted, there was certain economy of method calculated to arouse no suspicion and leave no trace. This would imply a criminal of no ordinary capacity, quick to decide upon a plan and ruthless in carrying it out.
When Mrs. Merridew awoke from her nap Miss Silver was ready to suggest that it would be pleasant to take the air. A remark as to her interest in old houses, coupled with the mention of Miss Cunningham’s name, produced some information with regard to the Dower House, followed by the remark that,
“Of course Lucy knows far more about it than I do. I am sure she would be only too pleased to show you the house. The Cunninghams are quite recent comers, but you know the saying about being more royalist than the king-well, it’s like that with Lucy. She has all the stories, by heart, and there’s nothing she likes better than repeating them. We can call on her this afternoon if you would care to do so.”
CHAPTER 24
When Frank Abbott dropped in after supper that evening he was struck with the gravity of Miss Silver’s expression. He had come to tell her the result of the post-mortem on Miss Holiday. They sat in the dining-room, and she gave him her usual strict attention whilst her busy needles clicked and little Josephine’s legging lengthened.
“Well,” he began, “she was alive when she got that bump on the head, and she was alive when she went into the water, but no one is going to swear that she didn’t hit her head on the side of the well as she went down. It could have been that way, you know, though I’ll give you this-the police surgeon doesn’t think it was. He is inclined to believe that there may have been an earlier bruise.”
“Were there any signs of a struggle?”
He paused for a moment before answering this.
“Not as far as any damage to her clothes went. But you will remember that Mrs. Selby said she was wearing a string of blue beads-”
“Yes, Frank.”
“Well, when we got her up out of the well it looked as if the string was missing, but afterwards at the mortuary it was discovered that two or three of the beads had run down inside her clothes and been caught there, which looks as if the string had broken when she was attacked.”
“That could well have happened. And quite compatible with a theory that she may have been stunned by an initial blow but not put down the well until later. You seemed to suggest this as a possibility.”
“Something like that.”
She pulled on her ball of wool.
“It is what I would expect. She must have been attacked in the short distance between the Selbys’ bungalow and the cottage. But it would be unlikely that the person or persons who attacked her would have taken the risk of carrying the body to the bottom of Mrs. Maple’s garden at an hour when she might still be supposed to be about. Florrie informs me that her bedroom looks to the back of the house, and though she is too deaf to have heard footsteps in the garden, she would certainly be able to perceive the transport of an inanimate body if she had happened to be looking out of her window at the time.”